


You're the Boss

by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 11:49:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw/pseuds/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor finds comfort in a dominant, caring Clara.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're the Boss

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at http://eleventy-kink.livejournal.com/942.html?thread=4185262t4185262
> 
> The timing shifts around a bit during the course of the story.

He came to her in the night, just before she was about to crawl into bed. He was wearing his absurd flannel fez-print pajamas that always brought a smile to her face. The smile lasted only as long as it took her to meet the haunted look in his eyes. “You're the boss,” he whispered, letting her draw him into an embrace.

“I'm the boss,” she echoed, and led him by the hand to her bed.

***

It had started after Akhaten and had gotten worse after Mr. Clever. “I wasn't in control of myself,” he had explained. “I need to be in control of myself. I'm a Time Lord, the only Time Lord, Clara.” His fingers had tightened around her arm as he spoke; she ignored it and stroked his hair with the other one instead. “I could set myself up as every god on every planet and nobody could gainsay me...and that terrifies me. I have to constantly keep myself in check, Clara. And when I realized how easy it was for someone to reach inside of me and twist me around...it was the worst feeling I'd ever felt.”

There's something else going on here, Clara had reasoned, and it had hit her a split-second later. “But it also felt kind of good, didn't it? The ability to put it all down, just for a moment, to say the universe is someone else's problem.” God become man, she had thought. “I thought for a minute you wanted to do some weird BDSM thing where you got your mojo back by telling me what to do. But you want to do some weird BDSM thing where you get your mojo back by letting me tell you what to do.” His nod had been small, almost ashamed. “Because you trust me not to do things like tell you to blow up a planet. Because you trust me to do things like put you back together and build you back up.”

He had nodded again, stronger this time. “You,” and she had known at once that he meant the plural, “have always been my conscience, from the very beginning. From the first days when I fled Gallifrey. I needed you to be strong for me. To be good for me.”

“I think,” she had said, letting out a long-held breath, “that I can just about handle that. Why don't you make us a pot of tea while I sit and think a moment?” He had left, and she had pulled on a robe over her nightshirt, and got a few blankets from a trunk, and curled up on the sofa, and waited for him to come back. So they could drink tea and talk. She had laughed, hoping he couldn't hear her. Somehow they had skipped over the dates and the steamy sex and gone right to old married couple. Well, she had thought, maybe she could work in a bit of the steamy sex, at least. 

***

Clara had turned out to be rather good at it, if she didn't say so herself. She'd always been good with children, soothing them, talking to them as if they were actual people. Not that the Doctor was entirely childlike, she had thought on more than one occasion, usually while he was inside her. But that same desperate need to be loved, that same fear that tomorrow he would wake up having to be more responsible than ever? That was the scared little boy or girl inside all of us. At any rate, he seemed to be looking brighter and happier during the day. But he still came back almost every night.

***

“You're the boss,” he whispers. “I made tea.”

“I'm the boss,” she replies, smiling. “Have a blanket.” She helps him drape it over his shoulders; does the TARDIS help dress him in the morning, she wonders? She would mind more, but there is something strangely fitting and endearing about his clumsiness. “Crossword?” she offers, producing a proper crossword, printed on a single sheet of paper that you filled out with a pen, not the eight-dimensional monstrosity he had once suggested which appeared to require the sonic screwdriver, a paintbrush, and a set of saucepans. He nods, and she switches on a small lamp. It throws a circle of light just big enough for the two of them if they snuggle close. Which they do. They work through the puzzle with her subtly guiding them. Let's work through this corner, she'll say. She lets him write in the answers (in part because he is faster at it), though she has to make sure he doesn't put in the wrong answer for something like “current monarch” by mistake. 

It's a good icebreaker. It gets them both talking, and into the habit of letting her hold the reins. They chat when they are stumped, punctuated by the occasional epiphany, and then she will tap the paper, and he follows her finger with his pen. Usually by the end of the puzzle, she's decided what she wants to do next. “How about a rub?” she asks. She suspects they can each use one; they spent a lot of time in manacles earlier today, and not in a sexy way. “I'll do you first, and then you can do me.”

“That sounds good,” he says, and already the light is starting to return to his eyes as he unbuttons his pajama top. It has a collar, she muses. Has he ever worn a bowtie with them? Better not ask, she decides, and goes to fetch the massage oil. 

Mint-infused for him; he likes the crisp, clean scent and the way it tingles on his skin. He doesn't quite purr as her fingers work out the knots in his back, but he comes awfully close. Yes, she thinks, and she suspects he can almost hear her. Yes, Doctor, just lie there and let me tend you. “That's good, isn't it, Doctor?” she asks him, and he makes the not-quite-purring noise again. 

Then it is her turn, and she hands him a small bottle of cinnamon-scented oil. The warmth of it on her body suits them both. She tosses her robe and nightshirt onto the floor and stretches out. “Why don't you start at my feet and work your way up?” she suggests, and he wordlessly moves to the bottom of the bed. “Mm, yes, that's quite good,” she says, and she can tell he is smiling just from the way his hands move over her calves. She has got to make him let her change out of her wedges before they go off to save the world, she thinks. “Up just a bit further?” she asks, and just for a moment she wants to arch up into his fingers as they move onto her thighs and tell him to go ahead and shag her until she sees stars. But the sex will come later, she knows, and contents herself with the gentle pressure of his hands. 

When he is done with her, front and back, she turns, glowing in the low light, and pulls his head into her lap, and pets his hair. Her fingers run through it, over and over, letting him lose himself in the rhythm of her caresses. “That's good,” she murmurs. “My good Doctor,” over and over until he is finally restless. Then she shifts, just so, and that is hint enough for him to use his tongue, his lips, even (gently) his teeth. “That's good,” she murmurs. “My good Doctor,” over and over until she comes.


End file.
